Things I do not get

[thanate]

include whining over "life is *so* hard, I got a rejection letter!" for a piece of short fiction.

Cumulatively, over time, looking at the changing percent of markets who have already rejected a story, and the percent of decent (however you define this) markets you can still submit it to, I can see getting a bit worn down. (Though, if you haven't already written and started sending out something you think is better by that point, it's time to get to it.) But if you're heartbroken because you got a rejection letter or three then you don't understand the game.

There are a finite number of short fiction markets, edited by a finite number of people. Any story (and that's ANY, no matter how good) will be liked by some people, and disliked by others; there aren't a lot of things in the world where the idea of "good" isn't a matter of taste. Probably I'm more picky than most, but I don't think I've ever read a collection of short fiction where I didn't dislike at least something in it; 2/3 good to 1/3 on the meh-awful spectrum is a really good ratio for me. The same goes for magazines, or any other form of market I might submit to; some of the things that these editors love? I am unmoved by, unconvinced by, or occasionally hate with a deep and abiding passion. Somewhere you've got to think that the reciprocal might be true.

Your story is on a quest for its audience, and you know what? Not every quest ends well. Think of all those older siblings in the fairy tales who couldn't follow directions. But that doesn't mean that your success as a writer hinges on any one sale of any one short story. Your ego shouldn't either.

This is not to say that I don't reserve the right to be depressed [one day in the future, pending actual, um, query letters...] by rejections from particularly awesome agents, but that's a different game entirely. And I'm not liable to go around complaining about it in public.

Comments

[impassive]

You're right.

I want to add that unsolicited subs are going to be judged not simply by quality/editor's personal taste/editor's feeling on audience reception, but by lots of more objective things, including available word/space allocation and thematic similarity to stories they've recently published (or seen) themselves. A great story can easily be rejected from one magazine for those reasons and go on to appear in another market & garner accolades, get reprinted, etc.

A story subbed is a puzzle piece. There are a host of reasons beyond the basic quality of the piece itself that could cause it not to fit into the picture.

Rejections ain't no thang. People who go all weepycakes over rejections don't last long.

[beagley.livejournal.com]

Well said, A.

The part that's different for me is your title. I do "get it", but I feel like encouraging those who are struck by this particular self-worth disease to shake it off. It's a rejection. It's one slush reader, or editor, in one room, saying, "Time travel? Meh. Fine prose, but I'm so done with time travel, and they didn't quite stick the ending," or similar. Spiking emotions the minute the rejection e-mail hits? Absolutely! We are invested in our work and rejection should give us the grumps. But we gotta work on the long game. And we have to believe in our work, and our next story, and the one after that, and after that, and so forth.

Then again, so far I've just kept my stories to myself and barely submitted anything. I don't like the process and I don't like seeing how it effects my friends and hurts them. My heart goes out to them. It looks so easy to start externalizing our self worth in that process, so I'm very shy of it. Cowardly, maybe? Well. I'm learning.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

I think maybe I had a good grounding in the idea that collecting rejection letters is an appropriate passtime for aspiring authors. I remember getting upset about something I got back in high school that dismissed a (rather terrible) story on the grounds that the editor "didn't publish occultism" but that was because I hadn't the least idea what occultism was as a genre and was pretty sure I hadn't written in it. On the whole, though... what's the worst they're going to do to you? Write a note saying, "I didn't like this story?" Meh.

Be brave!